Latest / True Crime: Killer Confessions / The Pristine Shoe: How a Burgandy Canvas Unraveled a 20-Year Secret

Transcript

The Pristine Shoe: How a Burgandy Canvas Unraveled a 20-Year Secret · True Crime: Killer Confessions

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: At 6.15 in the morning on a February day in 2022,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: a county road grader operator named Peggy Chambers was working
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: the shoulder of Sycamore Flat Road when her blade struck something.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: She stopped the machine. She climbed down, half buried under
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: 8 inches of compacted ice and road fill was a
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: single canvas shoe. Left foot, size 7, burgundy trim. The
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: sole was clean. The fabric was intact. It looked like
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: something that had just come out of a box, not
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: something that had spent 20 years in a ditch. That
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: shoe did not belong to the road. And the woman
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: it belonged to had not been seen since the night
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: of October 2nd, 2002. What investigators would piece together over
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: the next 14 months reaches far beyond a single cold case.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: It stretches to other roads, other routes, other women. And
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: it begins with a 33-year-old woman who grew seedlings for
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: a living and for the four years before she disappeared,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: never once missed a Thursday volunteer shift. Holly West was
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: born in Dennisville, Fenwick County, in 1969. She never left
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: not because she had nowhere to go, but because she
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: had built something real where she already was. She ran
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: a small nursery operation out of a rented plot on
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: the edge of town. Every Saturday morning, she drove her
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: truck to the Copley Square Farmer's Market, unloaded flats of
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: seedlings and perennials, and sold them to people who came
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: back to her table, year after year. She knew their
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: gardens by name, she knew which customers had clay soil,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: and which had drainage problems. She was 33 years old
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: in the autumn of 2002. Her spring orders were already placed.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: The seedling trays were stacked and waiting. There was also
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: the pantry. Holly had been volunteering at the Fenwick Community
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Pantry since 1998. For the four years before she disappeared,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: she never missed a Thursday shift. She sorted donations, stocked shelves,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: helped carry boxes to elderly clients who could not manage
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: them alone. The pantry staff did not have to call
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: to confirm she was coming. She was simply there. Her sister,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: John Stovall, would later describe Holly as someone who ran
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: on routine because she trusted it. The market on Saturdays.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: The pantry on Thursdays. Phone calls in the evenings. Specific, predictable, dependable.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: The kind of person whose absence when it finally came
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: looked exactly like something it was not. On the morning
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: of October 3rd, 2002, Jean called Holly's apartment. No answer.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: She called again that afternoon. She drove over that evening.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: The apartment was locked. Nothing appeared disturbed. There was no
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: sign of struggle inside. No forced entry. No blood. Holly's
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: car was gone. Her phone had gone silent. Detective Warren
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Pruitt of the Fenwick Sheriff's Office was assigned the case.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: He interviewed Holly's ex-boyfriend, Dennis Falk, twice. Falk was cooperative
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: and credible. Pruitt found no evidence of conflict. No threats.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: No reason to suspect foul play from anyone in Holly's circle.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: There had been no bank withdrawals from Holly's account after
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: October 2nd, not a single transaction. Pruitt's interpretation, the one
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: that would shape everything that followed, was that Holly had
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: chosen to leave. That she had walked away deliberately, that
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: the silence of her accounts meant she did not want
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: to be found. The case was shelved as a voluntary disappearance.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Jean Stovall did not accept that. She knew her sister.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: She knew the seedling orders waiting for spring. She knew
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: that a woman who had not missed a Thursday pantry
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: shift in four years did not simply stop showing up
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: to her own life. Jean kept every document she had.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: She refreshed Holly's missing persons listing every year. She did
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: not stop. What Pruitt had read as a woman erasing herself,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Jean read as something far darker. The same fact, no
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: withdrawals after October 2nd meant opposite things depending on which
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: direction you were looking from. That single interpretive gap would
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: cost nearly 20 years. 20 years is a long time
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: to keep a secret. It is also a long time
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: to keep a shoe. In the third week of February 2022,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: a county road grader operator named Peggy Chambers was running
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: her blade along the shoulder of Sycamore Flat Road, At 6.15
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: in the morning, her machine struck something solid under the
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: compacted ice. She stopped. She climbed down. Buried under eight
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: inches of frozen fill was a single canvas shoe, left foot.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Size 7, burgundy trim, the sole still clean. The rubber
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: had not cracked. The canvas had not rotted. It looked
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: by every measure as if someone had stored it indoors
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: and placed it there the week before. The shoe was
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: a discontinued model from the early 2000s, and it was
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: pristine in a ditch where nothing stays pristine. That detail matters.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Hold onto it. Fenwick County investigators ran the shoe against
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: open missing persons cases. The match came back to Holly West,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: 33 years old, nursery owner, Dennisville resident reported missing in
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: October 2002, and classified, after a brief investigation, as a
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: voluntary disappearance. The original detective had found no forced entry,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: no blood, no witnesses, and no bank withdrawals after October 2nd.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: He had concluded she chose to leave. The case had
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: been shelved for nearly 20 years, but the shoe did
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: not look like something a woman had worn when she
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: walked away from her own life. Holly's sister, John Stovall,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: had never accepted the voluntary departure conclusion. She had kept
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: every document, every report, every form, every contact. In a
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: series of folders she maintained at home and in one
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: kitchen drawer, inside a plain manila envelope, she had kept
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: something else. Holly's dental records, she had refreshed the missing
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: persons listing every single year. In spring 2022, shortly after
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: the shoe's discovery set the case moving again, Jeanne submitted
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: her own DNA to a commercial genealogy database. The result
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: came back in August 2022. a second-degree genetic match, to
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: a woman named Tina Merrow. Jean did not know that name.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: She forwarded the match and a letter explaining the context
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: to the Fenwick Sheriff's Office. Investigator Nancy Bennett received the
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: file in September 2022. Bennett had joined the department in 2014.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Years after the original investigation closed, she had no preconceptions
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: about what Holly's disappearance meant. She looked at the genealogy
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: match and began building a family tree with help from
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: a state genetic genealogist. The branches converged on a single name.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Carl Berry, 58 years old, living in Calverton, Garfield County,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: since 2015. Berry was not in Pruitt's original case file.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: His name had never appeared in any document connected to
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Holly West. Bennett started pulling records. The first thing she
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: found was a delivery log. In autumn 2002, Barry had
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: worked as a contracted driver for a regional kitchen supply company.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: On September 18, 2002, exactly two weeks before Holly disappeared,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Barry had made a delivery to the Fenwick Community Pantry.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: The receiving log from that date had survived. It noted
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: a rear service entrance delivery. Holly volunteered at that pantry
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: every Thursday. she often helped sort incoming deliveries. Bennett walked
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: the alley behind the pantry. She measured the distance from
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: the rear service door to the stairwell at the back
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: of Holly's apartment building. Less than 90 feet, a direct
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: line of sight, two weeks before Holly West vanished. The
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: second thing Bennett found was a storage unit. In October 2002,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: the same month Holly disappeared, Barry had rented a unit
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: at a facility on Sycamore Flat Road approximately three-quarters of
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: a mile north of the ditch where the shoe had
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: been found. He had kept that unit under a dissolved
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: business name. The access road ran parallel to a drainage
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: ditch for roughly 200 yards. Two anomalies. Two addresses. Both
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: on Sycamore Flat Road. Both in the same month. Bennett
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: requested a voluntary interview. Barry came in, calm and cooperative.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: He said he did not know Holly West. He said
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: his memory of 2002 was not good. Bennett would later
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: describe his demeanor as the calm not of innocence, but
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: of a man who had lived with a secret for
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: a very long time. She applied for a DNA warrant.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: The swab confirmed something the genealogy tree had suggested but
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: not yet proven. Barry was the biological father of Tina Mero,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: the woman whose DNA had matched genes in the database.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: That explained the match. It placed Barry at the center
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: of the genealogical thread John had handed to law enforcement.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: A vehicle search produced nothing, but Bennett was not finished.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: In December 2022, Bennett secured a second warrant. This one
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: covered a long-term storage unit Barry maintained in Calverton. Investigators
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: arrived and worked through the contents methodically. Toward the back
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: behind stacked boxes, they found... a canvas bag. Inside it
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: was a single canvas shoe, right foot, size 7, burgundy trim.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: It was the match to the shoe Peggy Chambers had
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: pulled from the ice 10 months earlier. Barry had kept
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: that shoe for nearly 20 years. He had kept it
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: through moves, through storage unit changes, through two decades of
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: ordinary life continuing around him. He had carried it with
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: him the way someone carries a thing they cannot bring
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: themselves to destroy. The shoe that had looked pristine in
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: the ditch, the detail that made no sense from the
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: moment Chambers climbed down from her machine, suddenly made complete sense.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Both shoes had been stored. Protected. The left shoe's pristine
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: condition was not mysterious. It had never been exposed to weather.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: It had ridden in a bag, in a unit, until something,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: ice heave, a drainage project, road fill settling over years,
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: had worked it out of wherever it had been placed
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: and into the shoulder where the blade found it. That
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: single impossible detail, the shoe that should not have been clean,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: had just become the thread that unraveled everything. Barry was
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: arrested in January 2023. and charged with murder in the
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: first degree. The shoe that had opened this case, the
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: shoe that had looked wrong from the moment it was found.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: That was the thing that held. Picture the alley behind
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: the Fenwick Community Pantry on a delivery day in autumn 2002.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: A driver makes his approach to the rear service door.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: He parks. He moves crates. And across less than 90
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: feet of open alley, He can see the back stairwell
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: of the apartment building where Holly West lives. One version
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: of what followed goes like this. Barry noted the sightline
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: on that first visit. He returned, whether on additional delivery
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: runs or otherwise, and continued to watch. He learned her pattern,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: the market on Saturdays, the pantry on Thursdays, the evenings
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: that were predictable and quiet. On the night of October 2nd, 2002,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: he approached her at that rear stairwell. That version does
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: not require speculation. It is what Barry himself said in
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: a proffer session in March 23. He told investigators she
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: had been watched. He told them the rear stairwell was
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: where it happened, and then he told them where he
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: had left her. Not in the ditch on Sycamore Flat Road.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Two miles south of that ditch, on private farmland, off
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: a county road that intersected Sycamore Flat Road. A drainage culvert.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: In 2008, a tile drainage project had replaced that culvert
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: and regraded the surrounding ground. By the time Barry described
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: the location, the landscape had been physically altered. Investigators excavated
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: in April 2023. They found skeletal remains, the dental records,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: the ones Jan Stovall had kept in a manila envelope
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: in her kitchen drawer for nearly 20 years, the records
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: she had never thrown away because she had never stopped
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: believing her sister deserved to be found. confirmed the identification.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: Holly West had been less than two miles from where
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: her shoe surfaced. For nearly twenty years, the ground above
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: her had been regraded and replanted. The culvert that marked
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: the location had been replaced. The farmland had continued its
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: ordinary cycles of seasons and fieldwork, and somewhere in a
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: storage unit, across a county line, the right shoe had
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: waited in a canvas bag. The interpretive gap that cost
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: nearly 20 years, Pruitt reading No Bank Withdrawals as a
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: woman choosing silence when it was the silence of someone
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: who had no more choices, had finally been closed. Not
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: by a confession volunteered, not by a witness who came forward,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: but by a woman who drove a road grader at 6.15
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: in the morning. and stopped when her blade hit something
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: that should not have been there, and by a sister
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: who kept dental records in a kitchen drawer because she
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: refused to let the world forget that Holly West had
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: not chosen to disappear. In November 2023, Judge Alice Fontaine
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: sentenced Carl Berry to life without possibility of parole. She
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: cited Jean Stovall's victim impact statement from the bench. There
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: is one question the record does not answer and may
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: never fully close. Barry's delivery routes crossed two other jurisdictions.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: In both, women disappeared during years when he was working
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: those roads. In both, the original rulings were voluntary departure.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: The same classification Pruitt had assigned to Holly. One of
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: those cases remained under active investigation when this record was compiled.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: The shoe was singular. The pattern was not. Carl Barry
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: was arrested in January 23. He was 58 years old.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: and had been living in Calverton, Garfield County, for the
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: better part of a decade. The charge was murder in
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: the first degree. The arrest had followed directly from the
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: DNA evidence. Jean Stovall had set in motion by submitting
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: a swab to a commercial genealogy database in the spring
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: of 2022. The biological link to Tina Merrow, the end
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: storage unit searched in December of that year. The right
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: shoe found inside a canvas bag behind a row of
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: boxes All of it had moved the case from a
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: cold file to an active prosecution in under 12 months.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Barry agreed to a proffer session in March 223. He
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: admitted watching Holly's routine over multiple delivery runs before October 2nd, 2002.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: He described approaching her at the rear stairwell of her
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: apartment building, and he directed investigators to the place where
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: he had left her, a drainage culvert on private farmland
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: off a county road two miles south of the ditch.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: where Peggy Chambers' road grader, Blade, had lifted the left
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: shoe from the ice. The culvert itself no longer existed.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: A tile drainage project in 2008 had replaced it and
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: regraded the surrounding ground. The farmland had continued its ordinary seasons,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: but the coordinates Berry provided were specific enough to excavate in.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Investigators broke ground in April 2023. The skeletal remains they
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: recovered were consistent with Holly West's dental records, the records
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: John Stovall had kept in a manila envelope in a
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: kitchen drawer for nearly 20 years, never discarding them, because
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: she had never stopped believing her sister deserved to be found.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Holly had been less than two miles from where her
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: shoe surfaced. She had been there the entire time. The
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: prosecution moved forward through the summer. In November 2023, Judge
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Alice Fontaine sentenced Carl Berry to life without possibility of parole.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Before announcing the sentence, she cited Jean Stovall's victim impact
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: statement from the bench. Jean had read it aloud in
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: the courtroom. The words are not part of the public record.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: The fact that Judge Fontaine named it specifically is, what
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: the record does make public is the pattern investigators documented
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: alongside the Fenwick County case. Barry's delivery routes during those
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: years crossed two additional jurisdictions. In both, women had disappeared
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: during periods when he was working those roads. In both,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: the original investigative conclusions had been voluntary departure. The same
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: classification Warren Pruitt had assigned to Holly West in 2002.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: One of those cases remained under active investigation when this
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: record was compiled. The other had not yet reached the
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: stage of charges. Neither has been publicly named. The Fenwick
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Sheriff's Office has not stated publicly whether Berry faces additional
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: charges in those jurisdictions. What investigators noted in formal language
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: was that the method was consistent. Service entrance deliveries, rear alleys,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: a pattern of observation before contact, women known in their
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: communities as dependable and present, the same qualities that made
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Holly West easy to watch. Her predictable Thursday shifts her
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: willingness to help at the receiving door. may have been
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: what made others visible to him on other routes. In
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: other towns, that possibility belongs to active proceedings. This record
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: cannot resolve it. What this case leaves behind is not
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: ambiguity about what happened. Barry confessed. A court heard the
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: evidence and sentenced him. Holly West's remains came home. What
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: it leaves behind is a question about the nearly 20
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: years between October 2, 2002, and February of 2022, and
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: how those years closed without anyone finding her. Pruitt's original
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: investigation was not malicious. The record shows a detective who
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: looked at the evidence visible to him and drew the
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: conclusion the surface supported. No struggle, no blood, no witnesses,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: no bank activity. After she vanished. He saw a woman
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: who had left no distress signal, and concluded she had
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: chosen to leave. That conclusion was wrong. The silence he
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: read as a decision was the silence of someone who
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: had no more choices. Nancy Bennett, working the same case
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: two decades later with a genealogical match and a storage
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: unit warrant, found what Pruitt had not found, not because
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: she was a better investigator in some abstract sense, but
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: because the tools had changed. Commercial DNA databases did not
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: exist in 2002. Genetic genealogy as an investigative discipline did
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: not exist. The right shoe was still locked in a
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: storage unit under a dissolved business name, without Peggy Chambers
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: hitting something in the road at 7am. 6.15 in the morning,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: and without Jean Stovall submitting a swab to a database
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: on a quiet spring afternoon, the left shoe stays buried,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: the right shoe stays hidden, and the case stays shelved.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: The tools changed. Jean Stovall did not wait for them.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: She refreshed the missing persons listing every year. She kept
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: dental records in an envelope. She drove whatever institutional resistance
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: she encountered by continuing to present facts, a DNA match,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: a written letter, rather than asking anyone to believe her
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: without evidence. The genealogical tree that converged on Barry was
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: built from a swab she submitted herself. The dental records
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: that confirmed the remains were records she had never thrown away.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Holly West had planted seedling trays for the following spring
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: when she disappeared. She had been growing a nursery business,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: selling at Copley Square, showing up every Thursday at the
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: community pantry without exception for four years. She was 33
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: years old. She was found because one woman kept driving
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: a road grader on a cold morning. Another woman kept
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: a file for nearly 20 years. and a third spent
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: months building a genealogical tree from a second-degree DNA match.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: None of them were investigating Holly's case in October 2002.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: All of them are the reason it closed in 2023.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: The shoe was singular. The pattern was not. This show
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: is made by Oboe Media.